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Dec. 31st, 2013 12:17 amI like to make frantic late-night posts because everyone is asleep.
(Except my cat, who is being adorable and does not offer good knitting advice.)
So for my birthday, I got a gift card for my LYS (Ren's Purl Yarn Boutique, holla). Mom said she got it when she heard me talking about all the beautiful Madelinetosh they just got in, and how I've been wanting to make a sweater for a while now. She's an enabler. I looked at sweaters of the right weight, since their recent shipment is a metric shitton of Tosh DK. Picked out a few, asked for Mom's opinion, and of course she picks the most complicated one. (It is beautiful. But goddamn. Might have to become a cloistered nun to manage it.) It doesn't help that I love Rowan patterns and have been meaning to knit myself something really nice.
Anyhow, I bought the yarn in different colors (but I loves the colors, and they looked beautiful all together, even the ones I normally wouldn't pick for myself, which I feel is auspicious.) I have knitting charting software, which was a pricey decision but has proven to be a boon. I've used it to chart written instructions for lace, and it was approximately 1 billion times easier than reading the long-hand version again and again. I digress. I made the chart, and I'm in the process of changing the colors to match what I bought as well as knitting a swatch. I've never knit fair-isle flat. There's a good reason. It's fucking balls. No one should knit fair-isle flat. I know how to fix this, and it gives me the heebie-jeebies. The answer is to steek. Steeking is like the bogeyman of knitting. Most who haven't tried it are terrified of it, those who have mastered it are the brave conquerors of the mysterious beyond. You have to cut your knitting. Cut your knitting. With your precious baby, that took a hundred hours to knit, you take scissors and bisect it like splitting wood. However, if I want a superior product (I do), I will, most likely, have to steek.
I've done fair-isle before, but not at this magnitude. I've never steeked. This is rustlin' my jimmies something fierce. I know I can do it, as long as I don't rush anything, include life-lines, and be patient with my fuck-ups. Luckily(?) it super-sale time over at interweavestore.com, so I just downloaded a video on a fair-isle, steeked vest. If I was smart, I'd make the vest first, out of the same brand of yarn. But unfortunately I'm smart but not wealthy. The Izmir sweater is a wrap/cache-coeur, so there's a lot of yarn involved. Knitted on size 2.75mm and 3.25mm needles. For now I'm going to try to make a swatch in the round and try steeking it. I'm seriously doing all sorts of self-comfort gestures while I type this (rubbing my face, stroking my hair back). I keep telling myself that I've been wanting to make heirlooms and if this doesn't count, I will haunt my progeny forever. They will tell mommy/grandma it's beautiful because they love me and value an inheritance without a pissy-ass ghost. Ruh.
This is like extreme knitting adventures.
Also, on another note, when I am queen of the world, all knitting needles will be measured by millimeter because the US/UK/etc sizing is bullshit. A US 2 is 2.75mm, a 3 is a 3.25 and a 4 is a 3.5mm. That's 0.50mm difference between the 2 and the 3, and 0.25mm between the 3 and the 4. This also applied to crochet hooks. 1-B crochet hooks (in an alphabetical system that starts with B, not A), are 2.25 mm. Size 0 crochet hooks are also 2.25mm. (There are "yarn" and "thread" hooks, with yarn being alphabetical and thread being numerical, functioning like shotgun gauges. The bigger the number, the smaller the hook. Because fuck you logic.) When you get small, that fraction of a millimeter matters a lot, and I care a lot about precision in my crafting. We need to use the metric system in general, just to help fight the stupid American image that certain parts of the population are working so hard to cultivate. Rahr rahr rahr rahr.
(Except my cat, who is being adorable and does not offer good knitting advice.)
So for my birthday, I got a gift card for my LYS (Ren's Purl Yarn Boutique, holla). Mom said she got it when she heard me talking about all the beautiful Madelinetosh they just got in, and how I've been wanting to make a sweater for a while now. She's an enabler. I looked at sweaters of the right weight, since their recent shipment is a metric shitton of Tosh DK. Picked out a few, asked for Mom's opinion, and of course she picks the most complicated one. (It is beautiful. But goddamn. Might have to become a cloistered nun to manage it.) It doesn't help that I love Rowan patterns and have been meaning to knit myself something really nice.
Anyhow, I bought the yarn in different colors (but I loves the colors, and they looked beautiful all together, even the ones I normally wouldn't pick for myself, which I feel is auspicious.) I have knitting charting software, which was a pricey decision but has proven to be a boon. I've used it to chart written instructions for lace, and it was approximately 1 billion times easier than reading the long-hand version again and again. I digress. I made the chart, and I'm in the process of changing the colors to match what I bought as well as knitting a swatch. I've never knit fair-isle flat. There's a good reason. It's fucking balls. No one should knit fair-isle flat. I know how to fix this, and it gives me the heebie-jeebies. The answer is to steek. Steeking is like the bogeyman of knitting. Most who haven't tried it are terrified of it, those who have mastered it are the brave conquerors of the mysterious beyond. You have to cut your knitting. Cut your knitting. With your precious baby, that took a hundred hours to knit, you take scissors and bisect it like splitting wood. However, if I want a superior product (I do), I will, most likely, have to steek.
I've done fair-isle before, but not at this magnitude. I've never steeked. This is rustlin' my jimmies something fierce. I know I can do it, as long as I don't rush anything, include life-lines, and be patient with my fuck-ups. Luckily(?) it super-sale time over at interweavestore.com, so I just downloaded a video on a fair-isle, steeked vest. If I was smart, I'd make the vest first, out of the same brand of yarn. But unfortunately I'm smart but not wealthy. The Izmir sweater is a wrap/cache-coeur, so there's a lot of yarn involved. Knitted on size 2.75mm and 3.25mm needles. For now I'm going to try to make a swatch in the round and try steeking it. I'm seriously doing all sorts of self-comfort gestures while I type this (rubbing my face, stroking my hair back). I keep telling myself that I've been wanting to make heirlooms and if this doesn't count, I will haunt my progeny forever. They will tell mommy/grandma it's beautiful because they love me and value an inheritance without a pissy-ass ghost. Ruh.
This is like extreme knitting adventures.
Also, on another note, when I am queen of the world, all knitting needles will be measured by millimeter because the US/UK/etc sizing is bullshit. A US 2 is 2.75mm, a 3 is a 3.25 and a 4 is a 3.5mm. That's 0.50mm difference between the 2 and the 3, and 0.25mm between the 3 and the 4. This also applied to crochet hooks. 1-B crochet hooks (in an alphabetical system that starts with B, not A), are 2.25 mm. Size 0 crochet hooks are also 2.25mm. (There are "yarn" and "thread" hooks, with yarn being alphabetical and thread being numerical, functioning like shotgun gauges. The bigger the number, the smaller the hook. Because fuck you logic.) When you get small, that fraction of a millimeter matters a lot, and I care a lot about precision in my crafting. We need to use the metric system in general, just to help fight the stupid American image that certain parts of the population are working so hard to cultivate. Rahr rahr rahr rahr.
